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Telco RAN DU 4.14 reference design overview

The Telco RAN distributed unit (DU) 4.14 reference design configures an OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 cluster running on commodity hardware to host telco RAN DU workloads. It captures the recommended, tested, and supported configurations to get reliable and repeatable performance for a cluster running the telco RAN DU profile.

OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 features for telco RAN DU

The following features that are included in OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 and are leveraged by the telco RAN DU reference design specification (RDS) have been added or updated.

Table 1. OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 features for the telco RAN DU RDS
Feature Description

GitOps ZTP independence from managed cluster version

You can now use GitOps ZTP to manage clusters that are running different versions of OpenShift Container Platform compared to the version that is running on the hub cluster. You can also have a mix of OpenShift Container Platform versions in the deployed fleet of clusters.

Using custom CRs alongside the reference CRs in GitOps ZTP

You can now use custom CRs alongside the reference configuration CRs provided in the ztp-site-generate container.

Using custom node labels in the SiteConfig CR with GitOps ZTP

You can now use the nodeLabels field in the SiteConfig CR to create custom roles for nodes in managed clusters.

Intel Westport Channel e810 NIC as PTP Grandmaster clock (Technology Preview)

You can use the Intel Westport Channel E810-XXVDA4T as a GNSS-sourced grandmaster clock. The NIC is automatically configured by the PTP Operator with the E810 hardware plugin.

PTP Operator hardware specific functionality plugin (Technology Preview)

A new E810 NIC hardware plugin is now available in the PTP Operator. You can use the E810 plugin to configure the NIC directly.

PTP events and metrics

The PtpConfig reference configuration CRs have been updated.

Precaching user-specified images

You can now precache application workload images before upgrading your applications on single-node OpenShift clusters with Topology Aware Lifecycle Manager.

Using OpenShift capabilities to further reduce the single-node OpenShift DU footprint

Use cluster capabilities to enable or disable optional components before you install the cluster. In OpenShift Container Platform 4.14, the following optional capabilities are available: image-registry, baremetal, marketplace, openshift-samples, Console, Insights, Storage, CSISnapshot, NodeTuning, MachineAPI. The reference configuration includes only those features required for RAN DU.

Set vectord as the default log collector in the DU profile

single-node OpenShift clusters that run DU workloads require logging and log forwarding.

Deployment architecture overview

You deploy the telco RAN DU 4.14 reference configuration to managed clusters from a centrally managed RHACM hub cluster. The reference design specification (RDS) includes configuration of the managed clusters and the hub cluster components.

A diagram showing two distinctive network far edge deployment processes
Figure 1. Telco RAN DU deployment architecture overview